Quotes from Joseph Goldstein

The entire spiritual journey rests on the morality of nonharming. This is the expression of the love and care we feel both for others and for ourselves.

If I were to say, 'God, why me?' about the bad things, then I should have said, 'God, why me?' about the good things that happened in my life.

If we're more accepting, more peaceful, less judgmental, less selfish, then the whole world is that much more loving and peaceful, that much less judgmental and selfish.

The world is like that boat, tossed by the storms of greed and hatred and fear.

Some people think the longer you can sit, the wiser you must be. I have seen chickens sitting on their nests for days on end. Wisdom comes from being mindful at all times."3

One thing you need to remember and understand is that you cannot leave the mind alone. It needs to be watched constantly. If you do not look after your garden it will overgrow with weeds. If you do not watch your mind, defilements will grow and multiply. The mind does not belong to you, but you are responsible for it.

Spiritual ardency is the wellspring of a courageous heart. It gives us the strength to continue through all the difficulties of the journey. The question for us is how to practice and cultivate ardency, so that it becomes a powerful and onward-leading force in our lives.

Mindfulness practice begins to open up everything. We open our mind to memories, to emotions, to different sensations in the body. In meditation this happens in a very organic way, because we are not searching, we are not pulling or probing, we are just sitting and watching.

When the momentum of mindfulness is well developed, it works like a boomerang; even if we want to distract ourselves, the mind naturally rebounds to a state of awareness.

We see that each experience is simply just what it is, and that the "I" and "mine" are extra.

At first, as we undertake the cultivation of compassion, we may feel genuine empathy with others in pain or difficulty. This happens when we take the time to stop and feel what is really going on—even for just a few moments before rushing on with our lives.

Munindra-ji, one of my first Dharma teachers, used to say that in spiritual practice, time is not a factor. Practice cannot be measured in time, so let go of the whole notion of when and how long. The practice is a process unfolding, and it unfolds in its own time. It is like the flowers that grow in the spring. Do you pull them up to make them grow faster?

Being contacted by painful feeling one seeks delight in sensual pleasure. For what reason? Because the uninstructed worldling does not know of any escape from painful feeling other than sensual pleasure . . .

For spiritual practice to develop, it is absolutely essential that we establish a basis of moral conduct in our lives.

Through mindful attention in the moment, we see the impermanent nature of phenomena and understand the happiness of nongrasping.

Georgia O'Keeffe, the famous artist from the American Southwest, expressed this same courageous attitude toward fear in another way: "I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life, and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.

I traveled through the rounds of countless births, Seeking but not finding the builder of this house. Sorrowful is birth again and again. O Housebuilder, you have now been seen, You will build no house again. Your rafters [defilements] have been broken, Your ridgepole [ignorance] shattered. My mind has attained the unconditioned, Achieved is the end of craving.

This one decision had striking implications. It has kept Buddhism relatively free of any centralized hierarchical structure and allowed a profusion of traditions to flourish under the umbrella of the great Bodhi Tree of awakening.

The third unskillful action, sexual misconduct

Actions of Speech The next group of unskillful actions revolves around speech.

Lying is the first in this group of unskillful verbal actions.

the five aggregates" (khandhas, in Pali) of experience: material elements, feelings, perceptions, formations, and consciousness.

There are many things in our mind and body, tensions of all kinds, unpleasantness, things we don't like to look at, things about which we're untruthful with ourselves. Truthfulness in speech becomes the basis for being honest in our own minds, and that is when things begin to open up.

The last in this list of unskillful speech actions is frivolous and useless talk. How often do we say things that really are of no use at all?